The present invention relates to a traction sheave elevator a hoisting unit and a machine space as described hereinbelow.
One of the objectives in elevator development has been to achieve an efficient and economic space utilization. In conventional traction sheave driven elevators, the elevator machine room or other space for the drive machinery takes up a considerable part of the building space required for the elevator. The problem is not only the volume of the space required by the elevator, but also its placement in the building. There are various solutions for the placement of the machine room, but they generally involve significant restrictions as to the design of the building at least with regard to space utilization or appearance. For example, in the case of a so-called side-drive elevator with machine room below, a machine room or space is required below or beside the shaft, generally on the bottommost floor of the elevator system. Being a special space, the machine room generally increases the building costs.
To meet the need to achieve at an economic cost a reliable elevator allowing efficient space utilization and in which, irrespective of the hoisting height, the building space required for the elevator is substantially limited to the space needed by the elevator car and counterweight on their paths, including the safety distances, and the space needed to provide a passage for the hoisting ropes, and in which the problems or drawbacks described above can be avoided, a new type of traction sheave elevator is proposed as an invention. The traction sheave elevator of the invention is characterized by an elevator car moving along elevator guide rails, a counterweight moving along counterweight guide rails, a set of hoisting ropes on which the elevator car and counterweight are suspended in the elevator shaft, and a drive machine unit driving a traction sheave placed in the elevator shaft and acting on the hoisting ropes, the drive machine unit being flat in the direction of the drive shaft of the traction sheave, and a wall of the elevator shaft containing a machine space in which the essential parts of the drive machine unit are placed. The hoisting unit of the invention is characterized by the hoisting unit comprising a discoidal drive machine unit and an instrument panel attached to a frame of the hoisting unit. The machine space of the invention is characterized by the machine space being delimited in the thicknesswise direction of a wall by the plane of the wall surface facing towards an elevator shaft and the plane of the wall surface facing towards from the elevator shaft. Other embodiments of the invention are characterized by the features presented in the other claims.
Various advantages can be achieved by applying the invention, including the following:
The traction sheave elevator of the invention allows an obvious space saving to be achieved in the building because no separate machine room is required.
The elevator is cheap to install as the elevator machinery can be assembled and tested beforehand in factory.
Applying the invention to practice requires no major changes in the design or manufacture of the elevator.
The machinery and the instrument panel are within easy reach, so the manner of accessing the machinery for maintenance or in an emergency does not essentially differ from conventional elevators.